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Withdrawn Phase 4 Interventional

Anticoagulation in AF Ablation and Effects on Neurocognitive Function

ClinicalTrials.gov ID: NCT02120560

Public ClinicalTrials.gov record NCT02120560. Field values are reproduced from the official study page; the official ClinicalTrials.gov record remains the source of truth for eligibility, enrollment, and contact information.

ClinicalTrials.gov public records Last synced Sep 8, 2026, 4:28 AM EDT

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Official title

Uninterrupted Versus Interrupted Anticoagulation in Atrial Fibrillation Ablation - Cerebral Thromboemboli and Neurocognitive Performance

Brief summary

Reproduced verbatim from the official ClinicalTrials.gov record. Not medical advice.

Atrial fibrillation (AF) is the most common cardiac arrhythmia in the United States, and treatment by AF ablation is quickly becoming the favored definitive therapy. Nonetheless, AF ablation comes with some risk, including bleeds related to vascular access and myocardial damage, as well as the rare incidence of clinical stroke from blood clots that travel from the heart to the brain, termed "cerebrothromboemboli." In fact, cerebrothromboemboli without any symptoms have been detected by special imaging procedures called brain magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) in as many as 22% of cases.(1-6) There remains clinical equipoise amongst experts regarding balancing the risks and benefits of continued versus interrupted blood thinning, or "anticoagulation" during AF ablation as they pertain to risk of bleed and cerebrothromboemboli prevention, respectively, and the potentially more subtle sequelae of these apparently silent cerebrothromboemboli remain unknown. In fact, both interruption and continuation of anticoagulation during AF ablation are the standard of care. The investigators will perform the first randomized trial of uninterrupted versus interrupted anticoagulation in patients undergoing AF ablation to determine if it mitigates neurologic injury. The objective of this research is to investigate the effect of continued anticoagulation for AF ablation on cerebrothromboemboli, and the neurocognitive sequelae of embolic lesions, which to this point are considered subclinical. The investigators hypothesize that continued anticoagulation will both reduce cerebrothromboemboli and mitigate any potential decline in neurocognitive function post-procedurally. The investigators also hypothesize that the incidence of cerebrothromboemboli (CTE) by MRI will mediate that difference.

Study identification

NCT ID
NCT02120560
Recruitment status
Withdrawn
Study type
Interventional
Phase
Phase 4
Enrollment
Not listed

Conditions and interventions

Eligibility (public fields only)

Age range
18 Years and older
Sex
All
Healthy volunteers
Healthy volunteers not accepted

This page does not interpret eligibility. Detailed inclusion and exclusion criteria are on the official ClinicalTrials.gov record.

Study timeline

Start date
Jun 30, 2014
Primary completion
Jun 30, 2015
Completion
Jun 30, 2015
Last update posted
Dec 11, 2014

2014 – 2015

United States locations

U.S. sites
1
U.S. states
1
U.S. cities
1
Facility City State ZIP Site status
University of California, San Francisco San Francisco California 94143

Site contact phone numbers, emails, and investigator names are intentionally not displayed here. Open the official ClinicalTrials.gov record for site contact information.

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About this trial record page

What this page shows
Public field values for ClinicalTrials.gov record NCT02120560, including study identification, conditions, interventions, eligibility (age, sex, healthy volunteer), timeline, and U.S. site list.
What this page does not do
No medical advice, eligibility judgments, treatment recommendations, study quality scoring, or AI-generated medical summaries. No site contact phone numbers, emails, or investigator names.
Where the data comes from
Sourced from the official ClinicalTrials.gov public API. The official record is the source of truth.
Last refresh
Last update posted Dec 11, 2014 · Synced Sep 8, 2026

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Open the official record

The complete protocol, eligibility criteria, and contact information for NCT02120560 live on ClinicalTrials.gov.

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